At the launch of Arundhati Bhattacharya's memoir Aparajita published by Harper Collins, the youngest voice on dais belonged to Navya Naveli Nanda -- entrepreneur, granddaughter of screen legend Amitabh Bachchan and veteran actor Jaya Bhaduri Bachchan on her mother's side, and of the late industrialist Rajan Nanda and businesswoman Ritu Nanda on her father's, daughter of Shweta Bachchan Nanda and Nikhil Nanda -- and, for one evening, the generational counterpoint to two women who had built their careers the hard way, decades earlier.

Key points

• Navya Naveli Nanda says the Bachchan surname comes with a responsibility to live up to the name, but she does not want her identity to be defined solely by her family.
• She credits her late paternal grandmother Ritu Nanda along with her mother Shweta Bachchan Nanda and maternal grandmother Jaya Bachchan as major influences on her ambition and entrepreneurial journey.
• On Gen Z, Nanda says young people face a different set of challenges, including geopolitical uncertainty and anxiety over AI, but increasingly seek purpose in their work rather than simply working for profit.

Where Bhattacharya and fellow panelist Monika Halan spoke of institutions and sacrifice, Nanda's contribution to the conversation, moderated by former CNBC-TV18 CEO Avinash Kaul, circled a quieter but no less difficult question: What does it mean to build an identity of your own, when the world already has a name ready for you?

Living Up to a Name -- Without Being Defined by It

Kaul asked Nanda directly how she separates her own identity from the surname she was born into, and whether it carries a particular kind of pressure. She didn't dodge either part of the question.

"Everyone has a surname," she said, "and I think everyone has an equal responsibility to live up to that name." She admitted she might never fully live up to everything that name represents, but said she intends to try, in her work and her life, the same way she believes everyone in the room tries in theirs.

At the same time, she pushed back firmly against being reduced to her family ties.

"I would never want to restrict my identity to just my last name," she said, "or the role that I play as a daughter or granddaughter or even as a friend or a sister."

Women, she said, are "far beyond those labels" -- beyond even the roles of mother, sister or homemaker -- and she said she hopes to carve out her own identity through both her professional and personal life, encouraged, she noted, by the women closest to her.

The Grandmother Who Made Business Look Exciting

Asked how much the powerful women in her family had shaped her journey, Navya Naveli Nanda said the influence ran deep. She spoke warmly of her nani (Jaya Bhaduri Bachchan) and her mother (Shweta Bachchan Nanda) as early role models, but singled out one figure above all: Her late dadi, Ritu Nanda (legendary filmmaker and actor Raj Kapoor's eldest daughter; Navya's father Nikhil Nanda happens to be the chairman and and managing director of the Escorts Group), an entrepreneur and businesswoman in her own right, who passed away a few years ago.

Growing up around her grandmother's world of business, Nanda said, made it seem like the most exciting place imaginable -- even when friends teased her for finding a business career so thrilling. Her grandmother, she recalled, spoke about her work with such infectious excitement that Nanda knew early on exactly what she wanted to do with her own life, an enthusiasm she said she still carries today.

"A lot of my dadi's ambition, a lot of her strength, a lot of what she did when she was younger and what I saw growing up," Nanda said, "has led me to be sitting here on this stage sharing that with you today."

Answering for a Generation

IMAGE: Emcee for the evening Dr Aditi Gowitrikar, Harper Collins' Sachin Sharma, Bombay Stock Exchange MD and CEO Sundraman Ramamurthy, Arundhati Bhattacharya, her daughter Sukrita Bhattacharya, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Navya Naveli Nanda, author Monika Halan and Avinash Kaul at the launch of the Hindi edition of Indomitable, titled Aparajita. Photograph: Sahil Salvi for Rediff

Later, Kaul turned to Nanda with a pointed generational question: Had Gen Z, raised with more advantages and more awareness than any generation before it, lost some of the resilience the women beside her had needed to survive their own careers?

Nanda didn't claim her generation had it easy.

She acknowledged that older hardships -- the ones Bhattacharya and Halan had faced -- may be less common today, thanks to technology and awareness. But she argued that her generation carries different weights: deep uncertainty over geopolitics, and real anxiety about what artificial intelligence will do to jobs and futures.

What keeps young people moving through that uncertainty, she said, is a shift away from working purely for profit and toward working "for purpose" -- a value she said she has heard echoed almost unanimously among people her age, whether the commitment is to nation, society, women, or simply to themselves.